THE ORDER OF THINGS
“An ethereal figure stood in the middle of the field on the first Saturday afternoon of summer. One by one, she instructed participants to take a deep breath before pouring a dark concoction of frankincense, Roman chamomile, rosewood, spruce, blue tansy, and lavender essential oils into their palms, instructing them rub their hands together, before imprinting them on a note card that turns into an artwork for the viewer to bring home. ‘It’s like the underbelly of a forest,’ said the goddess-like woman, the artist Lia Chavez.” — Forbes
The Order of Things (2020)
Healing Performance, 5.30
Presented by Good To Know.FYI
Bhumi Farms, East Hampton, New York
Performed during summer solstice at Bhumi Farms, The Order of Things investigates the hand as surface upon which intelligible order becomes perceptible through disciplined attention. Against a light sculpture charting solar motion—establishing cosmic temporality as structuring condition—Chavez conducts one-on-one encounters in which participants engage in sustained contemplative observation of their own palms.
Using plant-derived pigment that stains skin deep indigo, the work renders visible what escapes habitual perception: the intricate linear architecture inscribed in the palm. This is not symbolic interpretation but direct apprehension—the recognition that pattern precedes meaning, that order is given rather than constructed, that the body itself is a legible text disclosing structure beyond subjective intention.
Drawing from botanical practice grounded in material properties rather than esoteric attribution, Chavez positions plant essence as catalyst that intensifies perceptual capacity. The indigo stain functions iconographically—not as decoration but as revelation, making manifest what was always present yet unapprehended, rendering the invisible visible through material intervention.
The performance extends an iconographic tradition in which the hand signifies divine imprint—from Byzantine Christ Pantocrator's blessing gesture to medieval illuminated manuscripts where the manus Dei discloses creative authority. Here, the participant's own palm becomes the icon: a surface where contemplative attention discloses the relation between microcosmic bodily order and macrocosmic divine pattern. The hand is repositioned not as instrument of human will but as threshold where created order becomes perceptible—where sustained observation allows form to disclose itself as intelligible, coherent, and given.
“Chavez advances art history by looking backward—back toward the throbbing sincerity of the abstract expressionists decades before, and, thanks to her admiration of medieval and Renaissance artists, further back still. Her work is all about tracing inspiration to its roots and discovering, like Jackson Pollock, that we ‘are nature,’ that all of us ‘are nature,’ and that inspiration comes from the simultaneously earthly and divine sources at the heart of Being.” – Image Journal
“Explores the interconnectedness of the cosmic forces and our earthly experiences in order to invite our collective healing.” –Whitehot Magazine
Presented as part of Infinite Seed exhibition, the work proposes perception as epistemological practice: an investigation into how attention, when disciplined toward what is perpetually present, can apprehend order that precedes and exceeds subjective consciousness—what classical theology understands as the imprint of divine intelligence upon creation.